Not Doh-San himself, of course, merely the idea expressed here:
#3. There is context and there is context. Before flaming someone, be sure you’ve read enough of that person’s writings to have a feel for what that person is really all about.
No, no, a THOUSAND times NO! For all that I have inadvertantly allowed the various ideas presented here from time to time to be polluted by my personality – and perhaps this is inevitable – their verity or lack thereof has nothing to do with me or what I’m about.
The truth is what it is. If I am so fortunate as to occasionally get within shouting distance, so much the better. But it does not depend on me. I have no doubt that the individual mentioned in Doh-San’s is a decent human being, but that is totally irrelevant. So, too, is my decency or lack of it.
The beauty of the Internet is the way in which the dross can be stripped away. I find myself regretting my inability to remove the personality from my postings, because the conversations are so much more interesting to me when they are devoid of the petty meanderings of the personal that are so inescapable in person. This is why I am as indifferent to personal praise as I am to personal criticism, to even mention something in that context is to miss the point!
For example, it is well-known that I loathe Me So Michelle, the media whore. But I think no more about the natural person behind it than I do about… Romanian curling. (I honestly don’t think I’ve ever given curling a moment’s thought, and definitely not the Romanian variety.) I find the train wreck that passes for Amandagon’s thinking to be irresistibly fascinating, but I have more interest in the personal life of my nameless ASL 9-1 – who isn’t even a real cardboard counter, but a digital one – than I do in hers.